1Feeling emotions for fiction is a common experience. However, it raises a number of questions that have been at the center of debate in analytic philosophy of art since the 1970s. Why do events that we know to be fictitious elicit emotional reactions in us? Are these emotions genuine – that is, analogous to those we experience in everyday life – or do they have distinctive features? Is it rational to feel emotions toward fiction? And why do we actively seek out fictions that elicit emotions we generally try to avoid in real life, such as fear, grief, or shame?

2These issues, addressed by philosophers since antiquity but brought to the forefront of contemporary debate by Colin Radford’s 1975 paper, are often framed as paradoxes: the “paradox of fiction,” the “paradox of horror,” the “paradox of tragedy,” and so forth. Contemporary philosophers of art have engaged with these paradoxes – here broadly understood as puzzles about emotions and fiction – by raising questions about the ontological status of fictional entities, the nature and normativity of emotions directed at them, and the value such emotions may have in our lives. This Special Issue of Rivista di Estetica examines the significance of these puzzles for our understanding of both works of art and emotions, drawing on contributions from philosophy and psychology. The essays collected here address the topic of emotions and fiction from a variety of perspectives, reflecting the richness and ongoing vitality of the debate.

3For reasons of coherence among some of the contributions, we have divided the volume into three thematic sections. The issue opens with a group of papers addressing the traditional paradox of fiction.

4Derek Matravers approaches this puzzle by arguing that the features typically attributed to “fiction-directed emotions” in fact apply to emotions directed at representations more generally. He distinguishes between face-to-face scenarios, in which we confront objects in our egocentric space (e.g., I am in front of a wolf), and r-scenarios, in which we are confronted with representations (e.g., I look at a painting of a wolf, or I read a factual summary of an encounter with a wolf). Matravers argues that the philosophical problems traditionally associated with emotions toward fiction are not unique to fictional representations, but arise in our emotional engagement with r-scenarios as such, whether fictional or non-fictional.

5Stacie Friend and Alex Grzankowski address the paradox of fiction by contrasting it with the phenomenon of recalcitrant emotions – emotions that conflict with our judgments. Returning to Colin Radford’s original formulation of the paradox of fiction and exploring the correctness conditions for emotions, Friend and Grzankowski focus on what they call normative asymmetry: the fact that we tend to blame people for having recalcitrant emotions in non-fictional contexts, but not in fictional ones. To account for this asymmetry, they draw on Peter Hanks’s notion of a cancellation context, that is, a context that suspends or cancels the normative commitments typically associated with a given proposition. On their proposal, fiction functions as a cancellation context, implying that while we genuinely experience emotions in response to fiction, the usual norms governing those emotions are suspended. In the second part of their paper, they examine cases in which emotions elicited by fiction carry over into the real world, raising worries about immoral art, illustrated through discussion of works such as Gone with the Wind.

6Dong An proposes a solution to the paradox of fiction grounded in a pragmatist conception of belief, according to which pragmatic considerations – such as the beneficial consequences of holding a belief – can count as genuine normative reasons for believing. On this view, if one judges that believing in God’s existence would be beneficial, this pragmatic consideration constitutes a normative reason for belief. Applied to fiction, the proposal holds that we pragmatically believe in the existence of fictional entities in order to properly enjoy the aesthetic value of fictional works. An argues that this account serves a dual purpose. Not only does it offer a solution to the paradox of fiction; it also explains the distinctive sense of commitment involved in engaging with fiction – something that, she contends, is not adequately captured by make-believe, pretense, or “truth-in-fiction” accounts.

7In his contribution, Ed Armitage challenges Kendall Walton’s solution to the paradox of fiction, according to which emotions directed at fiction are not genuine emotions but rather quasi-emotions. Armitage defends the view that fiction-directed emotions are genuine by comparing emotional responses to fiction with cases of anticipatory imaginings, in which merely imagining a future event elicits emotion despite the absence of belief that the event will occur. By drawing parallels with recalcitrant emotions, Armitage concludes that we lack sufficient grounds for denying the genuineness of emotions elicited by fiction.

8The second group of papers takes our emotional engagement with fiction as a starting point for investigating its consequences for our understanding of emotions, our apprehension of values, and our self-knowledge.

9Andrea Scarantino revisits Walton’s influential claim that emotions elicited by fiction lack the motivational component characteristic of emotions directed at real-world entities. Questioning the notion of quasi-emotions, Scarantino argues that the relevant difference between emotions toward fiction and emotions toward reality lies not at the level of motivation, but at the level of regulation. We regulate our emotions about fiction on the basis of our belief that their objects are fictional, whereas we regulate emotions about the real world on the basis of our belief that their objects are real. Scarantino supports this claim through analyses of fear and admiration, and uses these cases to explore the role that ordinary emotions play in the games of make-believe engaged in by consumers of fiction.

10Fabrice Teroni explores how our engagement with fiction can contribute to our understanding of thick values through the emotions we develop toward fictional characters. Drawing on recent work in value epistemology and moral philosophy, and engaging with contemporary critiques of Kant’s notion of disinterestedness, Teroni argues that fictional engagement gives rise to distinctive appreciative attitudes that may be absent in our daily encounters with thick values. These appreciative attitudes elicited by fiction focus our attention on evaluative aspects of the world that we often overlook in non-fictional contexts, thereby playing an epistemically valuable role.

11Diana Craciun examines emotions toward fiction as a source of moral self-knowledge. After analyzing the roles of empathy and sympathy in our engagement with fictional narratives, she argues that emotional responses to fiction provide evidence of our desires concerning how narratives unfold. These desires, in turn, serve as defeasible evidence of our moral character traits. For instance, feeling pity for Anna Karenina may provide evidence that one has the trait of compassion.

12The third group of papers addresses a range of puzzles about emotions and fiction, including both well-known problems, such as the puzzle of painful art (that is, why we are willing to experience in fiction emotions that we would find unpleasant in ordinary life), and newer ones, such as our striking interest in junk fiction or in cringe comedy.

13Rather than engaging with well-established paradoxes of fiction, Alfred Archer and Nathan Wildman introduce a new puzzle, which they label the paradox of junk fiction recidivism. It concerns why people so often return to re-reading old novels or re-watching familiar films of relatively low quality when there are so many wonderful new fictions to engage with. The apparent irrationality of this behavior, they argue, disappears once we stop viewing junk fiction primarily as a source of novel aesthetic experiences. Instead, such works function as trusted affective scaffolds: familiar resources that people reliably use to regulate their emotions. On this view, repeated engagement with “junk” fiction is not a failed attempt at aesthetic novelty, but a rational and dependable strategy for achieving desired affective states.

14Matthew Strohl turns to a genre that fits nicely with the paradox of painful art: cringe comedy. He asks what is at stake when we laugh at violations of social norms, and under what conditions such laughter arises. Drawing on philosophical and psychological literature, as well as detailed phenomenological analyses of a range of films, Strohl characterizes cringe comedy as a form of social horror, whose enjoyment parallels that of horror films involving torture. He argues that cringe comedy elicits laughter only insofar as we do not regard its consequences as genuinely harmful, possibly because we can affectively distance ourselves from them. Strohl also notes that changes in social norms, whether geographical or historical, reshape the boundaries of the genre.

15Finally, Kaci Harrison develops a play theory of painful art, according to which our aesthetic engagement with painful artworks is a form of play that shapes our willingness to experience painful emotions through the motivational structure of play. Drawing on Thi Nguyen’s theory of games, Harrison identifies five key features of play: a play frame, playfulness, voluntary action, intrinsic motivation, and an expectation of enjoyment. She argues that aesthetic engagement, like play, is governed by norms; in the case of painful art, these norms require us temporarily to adopt the negative emotions elicited by a work in order to fulfill the aims of engaging with it aesthetically. Our willingness to feel painful emotions in art thus arises, at least in part, from an appreciation of the aesthetic experience itself.

16As the reader will note, this Special Issue brings together a wide range of original and high-quality contributions, both from distinguished invited authors and from outstanding researchers who responded to the open call. We were particularly pleased by the number, diversity, and international scope of the submissions we received. This made our work as Guest Editors demanding (given the difficult choices required by the limited space of a single issue), but also extremely rewarding. We believe that this volume testifies to the vitality and global reach of contemporary research on emotional engagement with fiction. It is striking how lively and productive this debate remains fifty years after Radford’s first contribution. We hope that the dialogues initiated here across different theoretical frameworks and disciplinary approaches will not only advance ongoing debates, but also serve as a milestone for future work on emotions and fiction, encouraging further exploration of this rich and enduring topic.